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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    [private]  I won’t, this time - Lepis
    #1

    Ilma
    And there's a lesson waiting to be learned
    the firestarters always get the burns
    and the good guys never get the girl

    She doesn’t hesitate to go and find Lepis as soon as she breaks from her conversation with Castile. She knows what is about to happen - Alcinder kidnapped, her move to follow the boy, his escape and then the new mother taken, still separated - and she has to tell someone. Someone who she thinks she can trust with the information that she dared not waylay to the dragon inside: he might have snapped, might have acted before anything had yet happened.

    She nears the prickly-pear bushes in flight, the light on her back carrying her through the dragon’s kingdom after meeting with him. She’ll probably be surprised to see Ilma coming for her, but really the white mare is on edge, feeling like she barely has time for this visit.

    ”Lepis? I need to tell you something before I leave.” The moon-and-sunlight mare calls out, knowing the dun mare should be here any moment.

    and shooting stars cannot fix the world


    @[Lepis] A short post-Castile pre-steals thread for you because that’s how far behind I was with Ilma’s threads
    Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this: men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.
    Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time
    #2
    staring at the ceiling in the dark
    same old empty feeling in your heart

    Their meeting in the Taigan woods was not destined to be their last, Lepis knows, and yet it is not Ilma she expects to see winging overhead through the heart of Loess.

    Standing in a low red valley, browsing on a dried stand of sweetgrass and mulberry, the cream and blue mare is easy to spot from overhead. When she lands, Lepis knows it is her that the white mare seeks, so she crests the low ridge to find the taller mare standing there just as the last of her words are spoken into the wind. Downwind of her despite the advantage of elevation, the dun mare catches the acrid smoke scent of the Dragon King. She’s been here a while, her words says, and with Castile.

    “What is it?” she asks without preamble when she is close enough to converse. This near, it is clear that Ilma hadn’t been quite as close to Castile as Oceane has been of late, and the pegasus feels a brief flash of gratitude that the man wasn’t yet chasing every piece of flesh he saw. His slow descent toward base instinct has been difficult to miss, especially given quite how visible he’s become of late.

    @[Ilma]



    LEPIS
    staring at the bottom of your glass--
    hoping one day you’ll make a dream last

    but dreams come slow and they go so fast
    #3

    Ilma
    And there's a lesson waiting to be learned
    the firestarters always get the burns
    and the good guys never get the girl

    Ilma feels like she’s running out of time, and frankly, she needs to calm herself down. She can keep it brief without being too hasty.

    ”Castile just asked me to tell his heir that she is Queen whenever he falters at keeping his dragon-self at bay. You’re to be her Cleric as you are to him now, he said. But there’s a complication on the horizon that I could not tell him in his current state.”

    She tries to stay calm, and yet, she can't help but glance to the Mountain and the kingdom she knows to lie just south of it, though she recollects herself quickly. ”She’ll not be back in time. I’ll go to her to support her as much as I can, jist as I promised her, but I’m not sure if I can make it - or if I’ll get the chance to tell her anything. That’s why I come to you.” Despite their earlier differences, the one thing Ilma can trust the dun with, is the well-being of Loess.

    ”When he leaves without saying a word, please continue his reign as Queen-Regent until she makes it back home. Alcinder will need you, too.”

    There is a matter-of-factness about Ilma when she tells Lepis what she knows, but with the concern for the mare and child etched too deeply into her face not to be noticed.

    ”I’ll do what I can for them, Lepis. But I am only one, and not in a position of power at that, either.” There is a shake of her head as she says it. But she can attempt to distract the monsters from hurting her friend, and distract them from catching up to her son when he will attempt his escape. That’s what she can do - that and ask another to be on the lookout for them.

    and shooting stars cannot fix the world


    @[Lepis]
    Goodbye, before I die
    Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this: men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.
    Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time
    #4
    staring at the ceiling in the dark
    same old empty feeling in your heart

    Lepis stepped down from a position of power and the world immediately descended into chaos.

    There is a causal relationship between the two, the former queen is quite certain. That she is meant for more in life than her current position Lepis is equally sure. Beqanna needs Lepis to remain in balance; it is as simple as that. Fragile self-esteem resulting from trauma in her late adolescence had kept her from accepting that, followed by a stillborn child, a divorce, and then by the shattering of her home by the Plague, the loss of Gale, and the betrayal and subsequent loss of her husband.

    Now though, with the latter half of her life ahead of her and ever-shrinking personal responsibility, the dun mare is finally free to assume what she’s been working toward since the moment she was born. For the most part, that means strengthening Loess, and keeping it moving forward while she bides her time and builds a firm base. The King is not an old man, and though he has had a long reign it has also been a strong one. In the coming days, when thieves stalk through the night, she will be less sure of this. For now though, she is able to listen to Ilma’s warnings with little more reaction than her flicking ears and a minute widening of her blue-grey eyes.

    If she were not so fond of Oceane, Lepis would have scoffed.

    Of course the man is going to give his lover a kingdom. What a typical stallion sort of thing to do.

    The rest she takes in equally silently, even the mention of the newborn Alcinder, the mystery of where exactly Oceane will be in this theoretical future, and a cryptic warning of the King leaving without warning. What does that even mean, Lepis wonders? Its not like the monarch alerts his Cleric each time he departs the Red Kingdom. She will understand more in the days to come, but this afternoon she feels as though she has been handed a tangled knot of mystery messages with no place to put them. 

    “We’ll have to hope his dragon does not grow too strong then,” the pegasus replies. Ilma herself had said that her gift was not a perfect one, that there are things that can change her sense of the future. Lepis very much hopes that this is one of those times, but nevertheless begins to make plans for the possibility that it is not.

    @[Ilma]



    LEPIS
    staring at the bottom of your glass--
    hoping one day you’ll make a dream last

    but dreams come slow and they go so fast


    no pressure to reply to this; maybe this could be the end of this thread and then they can possibly catch up later on in a more current timeline?




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